I was expecting seeing it covered in snow!
What’s the soil like there? It looks like the outside of your walls weren’t formed but poured directly against the soil, is that correct?
How many concrete pours was this done in?
We did. I have an easement in the backyard that made that a non-starter because of the room we’d need on the other side of the infinity wall for the water to flow and return. Needs like 3’ trough. Plus our enclosure is going to attach to the back wall of the pool. Also due to the easement. My neighbor has the same model house as ours but his house is 9’ more toward to the street than mine. So he had 9’ more to play with. His sun shelf is on the backside plus more decking.
It’s also very expensive.
Yes, they dig the outline, shape, depth of the pool, then rebar it, and shoot the concrete (gunite or shotcrete depending on the builder)
Like this video:
Cool, that’s interesting. We don’t really use that product here outside of commercial applications, excavation retention etc. We also don’t have a particularly big pool industry for obvious reasons.
Either way it’s looking nice.
Paver decking dropped off. They’re doing the marble coping now. Then the decking. All that should hopefully be done this week.
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At the World Trade Center, my company SKANSKA brought in a gunite company from California to shoot structural columns and walls in the hardest to reach areas. It really would have been a bitch to get concrete to these places even with a pump and we were under the gun to get the Memorial Pools ready for the 10th anniversary. We would build their scaffolds and tie plywood to the back of the wall or put up 2 sides of a column form and they would shoot the rest.
It really was BS though. All that stuff was cracking shortly after it went in and probably had to be replaced not long after, but we were ready for the 10th Anniversary
I also worked for a company shooting fire clay inside the boiler in a power plant. It was filthy work, always with a respirator and a face mask. But it was a lot of fun when they let me try shooting the stuff.
That looks great, thanks for posting pics. I find it very interesting to see all the photos back to them breaking ground.
That’s starting to look frigging awesome!
Yeah, the thought of shooting structural stuff like that makes me uneasy. I can’t see how you would get good consolidation, not have air pockets without vibrating, how strong it would be with no aggregate and so on. Even how wall crews shoot walls and pool floors like gmans had me raising my eyebrows a bit.
Either way, I’m always amazed by what you can do with concrete. It’s a fascinating material.
It really was BS though. All that stuff was cracking shortly after it went in and probably had to be replaced not long after, but we were ready for the 10th Anniversary
Am I confused you shouldn’t be proud of that?
Most “nice” pools built in warmer climates are done with the shooting process. It also allows for whatever design imaginable which a prefab fiberglass or poured concrete shell do not.
I’m very proud of having worked on the rebuilding of the WTC.
You have to realize the pressure we were under to be ready for the 10th anniversary. Work all day, come back at midnight. Work all night, come back at noon. Work until you need a nap then go to one of the rooms they had at the Mellinium hotel for a while then back to work.
You also have to realize that the Memorials are on the roof of a 10 story underground building with the PATH tracks and platforms all the way at the bottom. Under normal construction, you would build from the bottom to the top, but we had to have the Memorials ready for 9/11/2011. The gunite crew was on-sight doing other things and the Port Authority authorized using them. It already seems like there was as much temporary work be being done at permanent work.
When I left on September 10, they were already chopping out some of the gunite walls. It didn’t look like concrete, it looked like a malted milk shake inside. It saved time temporarily, but I think in the long run it probably had to all had to come out.
I retired on 9/11/2010, had shoulder surgery for a fall at the WTC, had bilateral hip replacements on November 15 and I was good as new.
I’m assuming Gunite and slurry are two different things? Was at the 9/11 museum and saw the slurry walls.
Yes, they are two different things. The slurry wall is the wall that surrounds the entire WTC sight keeping the water out. That held on 9/11. As bad as things were, had that failed everything would have been way worse.
Gunite is like shooting a form of concrete out of a fire hose. The Gunite is more like brick mortar than concrete. It was something they tried to save time at the WTC. Most of it probably had to be chopped out. Its was already failing 13 years ago.
I figured it was but isn’t slurry also a sprayed liquid concrete? When you are in the museum and look at the big slurry wall it looks like its sprayed on vs formed?
Yes, but you’re looking at the backside of the wall. The bentonite slurry inside against the earth to seal it.
Are you looking out into the Gulf of America?
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